Anton Chekov intended "The Cherry Orchard" to be a comedy, drawing his characters as extreme examples of what they represented. But American audiences, with radically different experiences than the Russians of 1904, don't normally see the humor in the self-made man, the wealthy brought low, the perpetual student, and the former slave who misses the 'good old days'. Some things do translate through the years and across continents -- Americans laugh at the clueless and chuckle at characters trading witty barbs. Without that common reference, "The Cherry Orchard" seems a dark story, almost a tragedy, which might be just as well -- the first time it was ever performed, at Moscow Art Theatre on January 17, 1904, it was directed so darkly that Chekov was outraged. Outraged or not, it was a resounding theatrical success and the play was almost immediately presented in many of the important provincial cities. This success was confined not only to Russia, as the play was soon seen abroad with great acclaim as well.

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"Often when people think of Chekhov, they think of slow, turgid tragedies that seem to go on forever," explains director Curt Columbus, "and I for one would rather stick a fork in my eye than watch that. Cherry Orchard is really a play about a time like our time, where the people don't want to acknowledge that change is coming. In the face of a sweeping change they stand still, wringing their hands and saying, 'But if we just keep holding on, things will all stay the same!'" Columbus goes on to say “Think about what if this were to happen to someone like a Paris Hilton – someone who seems to be unaware of the fact that they are blessed with a certain kind of wealth. Now imagine that privileged life taken away suddenly — what would they be like? How rabidly would they cling to who they used to be? That's what Cherry Orchard is all about."

The play concerns an aristocratic Russian woman and her family as they return to the family's estate, which includes a large and well-known cherry orchard, just before it is to be auctioned to pay the mortgage. While presented with options to save the estate, the family essentially does nothing and the play ends with the estate being sold and the family leaving to the sound of the cherry orchard being cut down. The story presents themes of cultural futility — both the futility of the aristocracy to maintain its status and the futility of the bourgeoisie to find meaning in its newfound materialism. In reflecting the socio-economic forces at work in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class after the abolition of the feudal system in the mid-19th century and the sinking of the aristocracy, the play reflects the forces at work around the globe in that period.

A student of history might know that the emancipation of the serfs on 19 February 1861 by Alexander II allowed former serfs to gain wealth and status while some aristocrats were becoming impoverished, unable to tend their estates without the cheap labour of slavery. The effect of these reforms were still being felt when Chekhov was writing forty years after the mass emancipation. In fact, his own grandfather had been a serf. The closest American cultural reference is the emancipation of the slaves, though Alexander's edict came without a nationwide war that killed more than a million people, and the serfs found moving into middle and upper classes unhindered by race.

Columbus recognized these parallels and gave us a simple shorthand to remind us which characters were descended from serfs by casting actors of color in the roles of Yermoli Lopakin, a self-made man who raised himself from poverty through his hard work and foresight, and Firs, the aged servant who still considers the emancipation a disaster.

This kind of cultural shorthand isn't unusual -- in the British translations of the Greek comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes, the Spartan woman is typically given a Scottish accent. I did spend a while wondering if the entire play could have been translated to post- Civil War Mississipi, much as Trinity's recent performance of Hamlet brought the Elizabethian play to the 1920's, but the romance between the Boris and the aristocrat's adopted daughter Varya would have been too much of a stretch to believe.

“Chekhov writes plays for an actual ensemble of people to play," says Columbus. "He's not writing starring roles - every single role is a starring role. That's the hallmark of a great Trinity show -- an ensemble of great actors.” So, recognizing that there is no acutal star of the story -- one primary protagonist -- here's the list of characters.

• Madame Ranevskaya, called Lovey, layed by Phylis Kay, heir to a sweeping estate with a cherry orchard so immense that it is mentioned in the encyclopedia.
• Anya - her daughter, aged 17, played by Emily Young.
• Varya - Lovey's adopted daughter, aged 27, who everyone assumes will marry Yermoli. Called Barbara in some translations, this character is played by Crystal Finn.
• Leonid Gayev, called Leo, the brother of Madame Revensky is played by Brian McEleney.
• Yermoli Lopakhin, played by Joe Wilson, Jr., is former servant of the Ranevskayas. He may have a good head for business, but good ideas go nowhere if no one listens.
• Peter Trophimov, played by Stephen Thorne, is a perpetual student. Okay, another clearly comic character, since it's easy to see humor in a 30-year-old undergrad. (Hey, I was one myself.)
• Boris Simeonov-Pishtchik, played by Fred Sullivan, Jr. Boris is a neighbor, perpetually in debt and recognizing Lovey as a soft touch, is the most easily recognized as a comic character.
• Charlotta - a German governess played by Anne Scurria. This character seemed more tragic than others because she purposefully tried to hide the pain under layers of humor.

• Yepihodov, the estate's accountant, played by Stephen Berenson. He's a hopeless (and clueless) suitor to Varya. Okay, maybe we have a lot more characters easy to laugh at than I remembered.
• Dunyasha - a maid, played by Angla Brazil.
• Firs - a servant, aged 87, who thinks that life was better under the old way of doing things. This character, male in the original version, is played by Barbara Meek, a much younger actress than you'd expect to make such a beliveable octogenarian.
• Yasha, a young man-servant played by Mario Hantman.
• Kolya, another servant, played by Nicholas Few.
• Pasha, yet another servant, played by Jason Hart.
• Musician, played by Steven Jobe
• A Passerby or Tramp, also played by Fred Sullivan. I didn't catch the dual role here, which should be taken as a complement, since I've learned to recognize most of the Trinity regulars.

I always recommend Trinity's plays, they're always a great way to spend an evening, especially if you stay for the after-play discussion. To enjoy it more, it helps if you realize that the play was intended a a farce, making fun of the clueless at all levels. Or forget that and let it be a tragedy and enjoy it at that level.

Here are some miscelanous notes about the production --

Talkbacks will be held after every performance of Cherry Orchard. The post show talkbacks at last season’s production of Hamlet were such a success, the theater has brought them back for the entire season. Audiences are invited to share their response to the play, the production, the themes — no topic is too high or low, no opinion is right or wrong. A company or staff member will moderate talkbacks for approximately twenty minutes after each show.

The set was designed by three time Tony-award winner Eugene Lee, costumes by William Lane, lighting by Deb Sullivan and sound design by Peter Hurowitz.

Director and translator Curt Columbus joined Trinity Rep as artistic director in January 2006. He was the associate artistic director of Steppenwolf Theater Company from 2000-2005, where his translations of Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya were presented in the Upstairs Theatre. Other Steppenwolf credits include translating Maria Arndt and directing The House of Lily, Division Street: America and Our Town. He was also the artistic director of Chicago Park District’s Theater on the Lake and an artistic associate at Victory Gardens Theater from 1990-2006. His adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (with Marilyn Campbell), which was presented by the Gamm Theater and Writers’ Theatre in Glencoe, Illinois, was awarded a Joseph Jefferson Award for best new adaptation and is published by Dramatists’ Play Service. Curt’s new translations of Anton

Chekhov’s plays have been published by Ivan R. Dee, including a volume of translations called Chekhov: The Four Major Plays. From that collection, Seagull premiered at Writers’ Theatre in September 2004, and Three Sisters premiered at Strawdog Theatre in 2005. Curt Columbus was honored with a 2005-2006 Joseph Jefferson Citation for New Adaptation for his translation of Three Sisters. He has also been director of University Theater at the University of Chicago, where he lectured in the Humanities.

Anton Chekhov was born on January 17, 1860 near the Crimean Sea in Tanarog, a small provincial port on the Sea of Azov. His grandfather was a serf who had managed to buy his freedom; his father was a grocer. When his father's business failed, the family of eight moved to Moscow, and Chekhov attended the medical school at the University of Moscow. While in school, Chekhov began writing in order to provide some immediate financial support for his family. The four plays for which he is best known combine the elements of tragedy and dark comedy: Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and Cherry Orchard. Cherry Orchard premiered on Chekhov’s birthday in Moscow on January 17, 1904. Chekhov died six months later of tuberculosis, which had plagued him for most of his life.

The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Konstantin Stanislavski and within six months, Chekhov died of tuberculosis. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce, however, Stanislavski insisted on directing the play as a tragedy. Since this initial production, directors have had to contend with the dual nature of this play.

Since the first production at the Moscow Art Theatre, this play has been translated into many languages and produced around the world becoming a classic work of dramatic literature. Some of the major directors in the west have directed this play each interpreting the work differently. Some of these directors include Charles Laughton, Peter Brook, Eva Le Gallienne, Jean-Louis Barrault, Tyrone Guthrie and Giorgio Strehler. The play's influence has also been widely felt in dramatic works by many including Eugene O'Neill, George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Miller.

There were several experiences in Chekhov's own life that are said to have directly inspired his writing of The Cherry Orchard. When Chekhov was sixteen, his mother went into debt after having been cheated by some builders she had hired to construct a small house. A former lodger, Gabriel Selivanov, offered to help her financially, but in turn secretly bought the house for himself. At approximately the same time, his childhood home in Taganrog was sold to pay off its mortgage. These financial and domestic upheavals imprinted themselves on his memory greatly and would reappear in the action of The Cherry Orchard.

Later in his life, living on a country estate outside Moscow, Chekhov developed an interest in gardening and planted his own cherry orchard. After relocating to Yalta due to his poor health, Chekhov was devastated to learn that the buyer of his former estate had cut down most of the orchard. Returning on one trip to his childhood haunts in Taganrog, he was further horrified by the devastating effects of industrial deforestation. It was in those woodlands and the forests of his holidays in the Ukraine that he had first nurtured his ecological passion (this passion is reflected in the character of Dr. Astrov, whose love of the forests is his only peace, in his earlier play Uncle Vanya.). A lovely and locally famous cherry orchard stood on the farm of family friends where he spent childhood vacations, and in his early short story "Steppe," Chekhov depicts a young boy crossing the Ukraine amidst fields of cherry blossoms. Finally, the first inklings of the genesis for the play that would be his last came in a terse notebook entry of 1897: "cherry orchard." Today, Chekhov's Yalta garden survives alongside The Cherry Orchard as a monument to a man whose feeling for trees equaled his feeling for theatre. Indeed, trees are often unspoken, symbolic heroes and victims of his stories and plays; so much so that Chekhov is often singled out as Europe's first ecological author.

Chekhov wrote The Cherry Orchard during the course of several years, alternating between periods of lighthearted giddiness and despondent frustration which he considered bordered sloth (in a letter he wrote, "Every sentence I write strikes me as good for nothing.") Throughout this time he was also further inhibited by his chronic tuberculosis. Guarded by nature, Chekhov seemed overly secretively about all facets of the work, including even the title. As late as summer 1902 he still had not shared anything about the play with anyone in his immediate family or the Art Theatre. It was only to comfort his wife Olga Knipper, who was recovering from a miscarriage, that he finally let her in on the play's title, whispering it to her despite the fact that the two were alone. Chekhov was apparently delighted with the very sound of the title, and enjoyed the same sense of triumph months later when he finally revealed it to Stanislavski. By October of 1903 the play was finished and sent to the Moscow Art Theatre. Three weeks later Chekhov arrived at rehearsals in what would be a vain attempt to curb all the "weepiness" of the production which Stanislavski had directed. The authour apparently also snickered when, during rehearsals, the word "orchard" was substituted by the more practical "plantation," feeling he had perfectly and symbolically captured the impracticality of an entire way of life.

Although critics at the time were divided in their response to the play, the debut of The Cherry Orchard by the Moscow Art Theatre on January 17, 1904 (also Chekhov's birthday), was a resounding theatrical success and the play was almost immediately presented in many of the important provincial cities. This success was confined not only to Russia, as the play was soon seen abroad with great acclaim as well. Shortly after the play's debut, Chekhov departed for Germany due to his worsening health, and by July of 1904 he would be dead.

Tickets are on sale at the Trinity Rep box office, 201 Washington Street; by phone at (401) 351-4242; and online at www.trinityrep.com. Cherry Orchard is made possible in part by the generous sponsorship of Kim and Liz Chace. Trinity Rep’s 43rd season is sponsored by NBC 10, with supporting sponsors Cox Media, Rhode Island Monthly, RIPTA, and RISCA.

Due to popular demand, Trinity Rep extended Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard for an extra week, so performances now run through the month of October.

Best seats are on sale now at the Trinity Rep box office, (401) 351-4242 and online at www.trinityrep.com. Regular ticket prices for Trinity Rep’s 43rd Season are $20-60. Thanks to the support of Ocean State Job Lot, Trinity Rep offers a limited number of $20 tickets on sale for each performance. Discounted and rush tickets are also available, call box office for details. Cherry Orchard is made possible in part by the generous sponsorship of Kim and Liz Chace. Trinity Rep’s 43rd season is sponsored by NBC 10, with supporting sponsors Cox Media, Rhode Island Monthly, RIPTA, and RISCA.

About the author, Paul Pence: Not a life-long Rhode Islander, Paul got to Rhode Island as fast as he could. He has 25 years of writing experience and numerous publication credits including the Providence Journal, the East Greenwich Magazine, Weissmann Travel Reports, Travel Lady Magazine, Jackhammer, Your Skin and Sun, TravelNotes, TexWoman, and many others.